


The Slider

by BigDeacEnergy



Series: Life's A Gas [1]
Category: Queen (Band)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hints of alcohol abuse, Inlove!Roger, M/M, One-Sided Attraction, Or Is It?, Pre-Slash, Sad!John, Strong Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-05
Updated: 2019-07-05
Packaged: 2020-06-09 23:33:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19486264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BigDeacEnergy/pseuds/BigDeacEnergy
Summary: The year is 1986 and a freshly divorced John Deacon has been rethinking his life and decides it's time for him to leave Queen. Roger Taylor, however, has a thing or two to say about that.~Named after the song 'The Slider' by T. Rex.





	The Slider

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is named for the song 'The Slider' from the album of the same name by T. Rex that I was listening to on repeat for the majority of the time it took me to write this. Would highly recommend that album.  
> The storyline, however, is not related to the song. Just John is sad and wants to slide, you know?  
> I hope you enjoy!

Words that had lost all meaning continued to echo throughout the bland and unfeeling meeting room in which three members of Queen plus their manager were gathered as Roger Taylor gazed blankly ahead into nothing at all. It was only two of his bandmates that continued to pose questions to Jim Beach - the other, to Roger’s dismay, was nowhere to be found - as the three of them were deep in a discussion that the drummer was no part of. Internally, the man was screaming with the force of a hurricane and wondered how on earth the others could possibly remain so calm in the face of such a groundbreaking, earth and heart shattering revelation that had just been announced by their manager. 

“This is bollocks!” The blond blurted far more loudly than he intended yet infinitely quieter than the voices crying out in anguish inside his head. “He can’t be leaving us. Deacy can’t be resigning from the band. We can’t let him do that!”

“Of course we won’t, darling.” The singer replied in a steady voice as he turned his burning gaze onto a devastated and destroyed Roger. “We will fight for him when the time is right and show him that he still needs us just as we need him but, as Miami said, what he needs for the moment is some space and time to heal. I think we owe it to him to let him have that.”

“Fuck that!” Roger spat back at his best friend. “He isn’t going anywhere and if you’re willing to let him leave us for even a second then I guess I have never really known you at all, Freddie. We’re a family and we don’t let anyone walk out on us. Not now, not ever.”

The guitarist, who was leaning his chin upon he long, steepled fingers in thought, was the next to speak up but not with words that the blond had wanted to hear from his oldest friend. “Roger, he’s going through a divorce; he’s just moved out of the home he has lived in for years and he’s away from all of his kids. He has more important things to deal with in his life right now than us and we can’t force him to continue on when he’s like this. You’ve seen for yourself how he is, mate. You know he’s not doing well right now. He’s heartbroken and lost and we would only be adding to his stress. He’s sad and we should let him slide if that’s what he wants to do.”

The blond slumped in his chair as he attempted to steady the heart that shuddered as it beat erratically inside his chest. A slight surge of fury crescendoed from the pit of his stomach for a moment at his curly-haired friend for stating the complete and utter obvious and the drummer felt rather patronised. Of course Roger had seen how little John was coping with his current situation as he had been the one whose shoulder that he had cried on when everything had become too much and had overwhelmed him in the recent weeks. The drummer was unimpressed to say the least that Brian was abusing that knowledge to attempt to convince him of something he would rather hang up his own drumsticks for than let actually befall their band and their lives.

Despite the irritation that was aimed towards the guitarist, somewhere deep down within, Roger was aware that his bandmates were only being rational and what they were proposing was what they ultimately believed was to be for the best however both his head and especially his heart couldn’t have disagreed more. All that the man could think of in that moment was that he had finally found his own place in the world the first time he had ever played his drums to John’s bassline and he was truly terrified of what would happen if he ever had to form a beat to another’s music. No one had ever quite gotten him the way that John did, not musically nor emotionally, and Roger was unsure of who he would be without the man by his side and hopping up onto his drum riser, smirking at him from beneath the bright and burning stage lights. It was moments such as those that Roger had to force himself to concentrate on his work ever harder as witnessing the bassist’s illuminated grin had his heart beating in overdrive and fireworks exploding behind his eyes brighter than any Bonfire Night display he had been to. The drummer was sure that his friend was aware of the effect that he had on him but he neither commented nor complained as the result was always that Roger’s extra attention to his own actions had him playing all the better. John brought out the best in the drummer and the both of them knew it well so how on earth was he expected to continue on with the same energy and fire without his teasing, heated gaze urging him ever onwards and upwards? 

The blond had figured out the reason behind why his breath would catch in his throat and threaten to choke him whenever the bassist would smile in his direction and why he found it so painfully difficult to ever tear his eyes away from the man quite early on in the history of the band. However, the realisation had still come much too late as John had already settled down with Veronica and so the drummer had made the mature decision to stay silent about his feelings. In the past, Roger had never been one to go down without a fight but a moment had come that had stopped him dead in his tracks and changed everything for him forever. The man had witnessed the most glorious of sparkles glimmer delightedly within those captivating greyish green eyes, that only is his dreams would ever be aimed at him, when the woman had laughed at a stupid joke he had made. It was then that he made peace with the fact that John would never be his and had decided he would continue to live out his lonely days ignoring his broken, aching heart every time the bassist would glance his way.

Roger had unintentionally always paid more attention to John than he ever had to anyone else. Subsequently, he had been the first to conclude that the bassist and his wife were headed in the wrong direction when he first noticed that that same infamous sparkle that meant the whole entire world to Roger had been absent from the brunet’s eyes for far too long. Regardless, prior knowledge of their struggles had not dulled the astonishment that the man had felt when John announced to the band that his wife had filed for divorce. Roger wasn’t selfish enough to feel gladdened by the news, he was just as heartbroken as his friend as the last thing he could have ever wanted was for John to get hurt and now he had been destroyed. In the week preceding the day John had informed them of his impending divorce, the two of them had stayed up all night long as the bassist vowed to himself just as much as he did to the drummer that he would find a way to sew the tatters of his marriage back together and Roger had hoped that he would for his own sake. The drummer was used to placing John’s emotions far above his own and that day was no different at all.

As the band - minus John, Roger wouldn’t let him go that easily - meeting was finalised and its concluding remarks had dissipated into the surrounding air, the blond was the first to vacate the premises as there was somewhere else he needed to be and someone else he with whom he was supposed to be with. The man clambered into his car and sped away from the building where his world had crumbled into dust around him with only the blazing sun that shone down from up above and seemed to travel along with his vehicle for company.

The blond’s heart burned with an inferno of empathy for the man he so loved. Roger had been there for the bassist for every step he had taken down this road to destruction yet never once had the man mentioned any desire to desert them. The drummer couldn’t have imagined even in his darkest of daydreams how terrible it must have gotten for John to think that that was the only resolution for his trauma and he was desperate to prove otherwise to him. Whatever it took, the man vowed that he would ensure that John never abandoned them because he truly didn’t think the band nor himself would be capable of surviving such a tragic and heart-wrenching loss.

Roger did his utmost in order to weave through the rush hour traffic that had emerged from every direction, seemingly just to torment and infuriate him. Every single wasted second apart from John was another moment that the drummer knew would be convincing the other man that his decision was correct and so his road rage reached its peak - with Roger bellowing at any and everything that was blocking his path to the bassist from the other vehicles to one, solitary pigeon on the road. Every inch of his body, inside and out, thrummed with a terrible anxiety and great concern for the man as he had no idea what he would find when he reached his friend nor what he could possibly say to him to convince him to stay. Perhaps he was running a fool’s errand; perhaps he was battling for an already defeated war effort but Roger would be damned if he didn’t at least try to salvage the life he had known and loved for over a decade and a half, one that meant absolutely everything to him and to his friends. A life that he knew beyond any doubt that John would miss above anything if he ever truly did give it up. 

After what seemed like far too long in his personal opinion, Roger finally pulled his car up outside of the apartment building where John had been renting a flat until he could find somewhere more permanent to call his home. His shaking, unsteady legs carried him towards the entrance and he prayed to any deity who would listen to him that the bassist would grant him access and not leave him out in the wasteland of his broken heart and shattered dreams.

The drummer was bouncing on the balls of his feet in nervous anticipation as the buzzer rang out into the street and disrupted the gentle calm, desperately awaiting the moment that John would silence it and replace it with the sound of his voice. The call had ended before anyone had answered it but Roger wasn’t willing to yield to fate just yet and so he pushed the buzzer again...and again when that call also wasn’t received. And again.

“Hello?” Came the eventual, disgruntled voice of the man Roger loved and his heart rate sped up in response. A sensation he was more than used to after fifteen years’ worth of it.

“Hi, Deacs.” The blond responded and the adoration laced within his tone was clear enough for even him to hear.

The man on the other end of the line didn’t say anything at all for a moment but let out a heavy sigh that still sounded melodic to Roger’s ears. The drummer was briefly distracted and began to wonder how on earth John could ever believe that he couldn’t sing when every noise that escaped his mouth sounded like the most beautiful of music to the blond. “Roger, there’s a reason I didn’t go to the meeting today. I don’t need anyone to try and talk me down. My decision is made. I’m sorry.”

“No, no, no. Don’t go, Deacs. Please, I need to talk to you.” The drummer rambled as he sensed John about to end the call and cut off the intercom, dooming their conversation.

“It’s better this way.” The man mumbled however the pain and uncertainty rang through his voice clear as the glorious spring day that surrounded the blond.

“You’re wrong, John.”

“You’re not going to go away, are you?”

“Not at all. I’ll keep ringing your bell until you let me in. I’ll stand here all night if I have to and you know I’ll bloody well do it.”

“Yeah, I do. You really are a stubborn bastard.”

“So I’ve been told.” Roger chuckled quietly to only himself and the birds that trilled gleefully in the trees as he entered John’s building following the release of the door. 

The blond took the stairs two and three at a time as he could stand John’s absence from his life no longer. Roger’s arms ached to entwine themselves around the bassist in order to hold him close to his chest and make it clear to him that everything would fall into place one way or another. The man wished with all of his might that, before long, he may be blessed with the opportunity to see his friend smile once more. In that moment, and every moment of his life, he would have given anything he could for John to feel something that even remotely resembled joy again.

After what seemed to be an eternity, Roger arrived winded and panting on his friend’s floor. The man was bent double, his hands splayed across his knees for support at the edge of the staircase as his breath reluctantly returned to him.

“Getting old, Rog?” A teasing voice called to him and had the drummer flinging his body around in a flash in order for him to meet those gorgeous eyes he loved so much.

Even in the dim, artificial lighting that scarcely illuminated the hallway of the apartment building, Roger was taken aback by how radiant the bassist looked. John’s back was pressed up against the doorframe of his flat as he lounged against it with one foot over the other as he awaited his arrival, a cigarette in one hand and an old ashtray in the other. The drummer was utterly unsurprised to see that, even in his grief, John hadn’t lost his charming, wicked smirk and razor-sharp wit. 

Roger strode towards him and, with a false sense of bravado, plucked the cigarette from John’s fingertips and took a long drag. “Guess I must be.” The man replied airily as he positioned himself across from his friend, leaning on the other side of the doorframe and blew smoke into the air.

“Thief.” John muttered as he stared deeply into Roger’s eyes. Due to their proximity, the drummer was able to feel the true force and intensity of his friend’s gaze and it was as though the younger man could see into his very soul. As the blond detected John’s soft breaths drifting across his cheeks, his heart began to pound until it was all that he could hear. He wondered if the other man could hear it too when, for a brief moment that was gone so suddenly that Roger questioned if it had ever truly existed at all, the brunet’s eyes flickered downwards towards his chest that encased the organ that beat only for him before returning to meet Roger’s piercing, sapphire gaze. 

Neither of the men uttered any other word for the duration it took for the two of them to pass the cigarette between one another until it was nothing but ash. John was the first to make a move as he strolled into his apartment with his shoulders slumped. Roger, who was following closely along behind him, longed to reach out and caress the offending joints until the tension and anxieties they wove tragic tales of melted away into a blissful oblivion. However, the drummer’s hands remained welded to his side as he silently cursed himself for allowing his thoughts to run away with him yet again. John was an enchanting daydream to him whether the bassist knew it or not and sometimes, Roger was almost convinced that he did.

The brunet settled himself on his sofa, his head tipped to the side and resting on the palm of his hand as his gaze focused on Roger once more, willing him to say what he had come for. The blond struggled to breathe for a moment under the watchful, beautiful eyes of the only person he had ever truly loved but he eventually was victorious in the war to get himself under control once more.

“You know what I’m here to say to you, Deacy.” The drummer sighed as he utilised every bit of his willpower to drag his gaze away from the bassist to glance around the room that he was disheartened to find was littered with countless empty bottles of beer and some stronger poisons too.

“Mmm.” The other man hummed in acknowledgement but made no further comment which prompted Roger to continue.

“I don’t think you should leave us. Queen isn’t Queen without you. We need you.” The blond sucked in a heavy breath and bit his lip before finally finishing his oration. “I need you.”

The brunet sat up slightly straighter and all but rolled his eyes as he responded to his friend in exasperation. “You’re a big boy, Roger. You will be fine without me and, as for Queen-”

“No, I won’t.” The blond interrupted abruptly and he observed as the bassist’s eyebrows narrowed in confusion. “And I can’t even begin to communicate to you how sorry I am if I have ever let you believe that I can handle this world and everything she throws at us without you right there with me. John, I can’t live my life without you in it.”

“Roger…” John began uncertainly and the older man witnessed within his troubled gaze that he had sussed where this conversation was headed. 

“No, John, please let me finish. If you can believe, even for a second, that I will be fine without you then I have not done enough to prove your worth to you and how you make my life better everyday. You are the brightest light this world has ever seen and you have always been the one to guide me through the darkness. Your laugh is the only sound I could ever want to hear for the rest of my days because that sound is the closest I will ever get to heaven. You, John, you are heaven in my eyes and you make me feel more at peace than I ever thought I could be. Despite how gentle and generous you are, you have also never failed to surprise me with that savage wit and wicked sense of humour of yours. You keep me on my toes and life is never boring when I am with you. I have never laughed as much with everyone else in my life combined than I did with you in the first couple of years of knowing you alone. You bring unrivalled, undisputed joy into my life and I want, no, I need you to know that I wouldn’t be the person I am today without you.”

The man’s voice trembled as he spoke his concluding line, words that had been dancing on the tip of his tongue for years, begging to be finally set free but never once spoken out loud. “You have my heart, John. I’m in love with you...but I think you may have already figured that part out.”

The bassist’s guilty gaze suddenly dropped to his lap where his talented hands were fiddling nervously, winding together and then undoing their work in an unrelenting cycle. “I guessed that you had some kind of feelings for me but I never knew the extent. It was the way you would always do anything to be closer to me and touch me and I caught you staring once or twice.”

“No need to be polite, John. You can say you caught me ogling you every bloody day since I met you.” A ghost of a chuckle escaped from the bassist’s chest as the edges of his lips turned upwards ever so slightly. Roger took a moment to gather his thoughts before he was the one to disrupt the silence once more. “I’m not expecting anything of you. I’m not telling you any of this because I think you’re going to tell me you love me too, whisk me off my feet and we’ll run off into the sunset together. I want you to know how fucking important you are to me so you can understand that I value your happiness above anything else. I can’t let you leave the band because I know you too well and it won’t make you happy in the long term. If I believed that it would and that this was the right decision then I’d let you go in a heartbeat and I would go too because you mean more to me than even Queen does. Come on, Deacy, you must know that this isn’t what you really want.”

The younger man fell forward and clutched his head in his hands as a single sob racked his frame. In an instant, Roger’s hand had closed the distance between the two of them and was rubbing soothing circles into his friend’s shoulder. “What I want is for things to go back to the way they were.” John cried out and leaning in ever so slightly to the blond’s grounding touch. “Not last year or the year before. Way back to when Ronnie and I first started out. Everything was so simple back then because it was just the two of us in it together and our future was all laid out plainly in front of us. We were going to get married, have kids and raise them together and the sun may as well have shone out of her in my eyes. She was it for me and that’s all I needed to know.”

“I know the feeling.” Roger’s sigh was wistful and tainted with regret but he suddenly wished he had never opened his mouth the moment that John looked upwards at him with heartbreak and sorrow written plainly across his face.

“I’m sorry.” The bassist mouthed at Roger, unable to fully vocalise the words and finish the sentence as tears flooded his eyes. The drummer, however, heard the rejection more clearly in his friend’s silence than he would have done if he’d have screamed it from the rooftops. John didn’t want him back, simple as that.

The blond shook his head as he swallowed the lump in his throat, leaned forwards to brush a stray tear from his friend’s cheek with his free hand and replied: “You have nothing to apologise for. Please keep going.”

“I still love her, I do, but it isn’t in that same way. She’s the mother of my children and she will always mean the world to me for that but I don’t see her as the person I want to wake up next to when I’m in my eighties anymore. Ronnie feels the same, she told me so herself, but she won’t fight to get that back like I want to. We’ve grown distant but the way to solve that is to spend time together and work on what we built so long ago but she just wants to give up. I don’t know how I am supposed to let her go.”

The older man surged forward and enveloped his devastated friend in an embrace, ignoring his own broken heart as he did so. John laid his head on Roger’s shoulder as he began to sob freely, wrapped in the arms of one of the people who meant the most to him. “You know what they say, John. If you love someone then you have to set them free. God, it isn’t easy but you’ll know if it’s the right thing to do. Does it not feel like that to you?”

The bassist took a couple of seconds to steady his breathing and regain the voice that could send Roger wild. “One of the most frightening things about this is that maybe it does feel like the right decision and I hate that so fucking much. I’ve been with her for so long that I don’t know how to be without her and maybe I’m just being selfish in wanting her to stay so I won’t be alone.”

“John Deacon,” Roger stated as he lifted the younger man’s head to look at him and ran his fingertip slowly and softly along the delicate skin that covered his cheekbone, “You are not a selfish person. This is a terrible situation and a dramatic change in your life and you are allowed to be frightened by it all. Please know you will never be alone. You’ll always have a family in Queen. You have Miami, Freddie and Brian behind you all the way.”

“And you?” The brunet whispered, his shaking voice only minutely louder than the silence as he held Roger’s gaze, the two of them barely breathing.

“And me.” The drummer confirmed. “Because like it or not, Deacy, I’m in it for the long haul. I’m not going anywhere, I swear to God.” 

Neither of the men spoke for a while as they continued to contentedly share in one another’s presence, both of them a little overwhelmed with the revelations of the day. Roger’s heart was in his throat as his eyes trailed over every inch of the face that was burned so deeply into his memory forever yet he could still never get enough of. The older man had known from the day that his friend had walked into his life that the man with the handsome face and those hands he couldn’t stop his eyes from wandering to during his audition was someone incredibly special and he had fifteen years of memories that served as evidence that he was correct from day one. John had entered his life one day and Roger would rather die than ever let him walk out of it.

It was only when the younger man’s breath ghosted over his lips that the drummer noticed how close they had become. For the life of him, Roger couldn’t remember leaning in but somehow, the two men were less than an inch from one another and his heart gave a sudden lurch that spoke of half-fear, half-desire. 

The man swiftly dropped his hand from where it was still grazing against the now rosy and blushing cheek of the one he loved and collapsed backwards onto the couch. “I’m not sure about you but I could really do with another smoke. One each this time.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” The bassist replied, a grin spreading across his face, “I quite enjoy sharing one with you every now and again.”

“You’re a cheap bastard, Deacon. That’s what you are. A cheap bastard.” Roger shot back and his pilfered yet another of John’s cigarettes from his packet, all the while silently screaming at his delusional mind to not overthink his friend’s words because John Deacon could not be flirting with him even if that was perhaps what it seemed like. 

The drummer couldn’t help but let his eyes linger on his friend’s lips as they moulded themselves so perfectly around the stick clutched between them. The man’s mind went momentarily blank of everything but the desire to know what those lips felt like. It was only John poking his hand to offer the shared smoke back with a raised eyebrow that dragged him back to reality, blushing madly at getting caught transfixed in the man yet again. 

Hours passed by as the two men became entirely captivated by the other’s presence until the packet of cigarettes that lay on the table had been entirely emptied - every last stick shared between the two as opposed to them having one each. The drummer was aware that he had probably overstayed his welcome but his friend never once complained nor did he attempt to usher the blond out of the door. Regardless, Roger made the excruciating decision to step out into the darkness of the now long since set sun.

The two men planted their feet in the doorway as they bade each other goodnight, perhaps far closer to one another than strictly necessary. “I’ll see you at rehearsals.” John announced as he smiled downwards at the blond.

“Rehearsals?” The drummer queried.

“Yes, don’t we have a tour starting soon that we should be getting ready for or something?”

“You’re coming back!” The blond stated, positively beaming. 

“You were right, Roger.” John purred as he trailed a single knuckle along the blond’s cheekbone, mirroring the man’s earlier action as the older man’s heart threatened to collapse from overexertion within his chest. “I’m not ready to give up all of the madness just yet. I belong with Queen. I belong with you.”

“You do, Deacs. You really do.” The drummer breathed, scarcely making a sound and even he wasn’t quite sure what he was implying within his own words.

In the most memorable and glorious of heartbeats, the younger man did something that caught Roger completely off guard as he closed the gap between the two of them and pressed his lips to the blond’s. It was a gentle and friendly peck, nothing more, and it lasted for no time at all but the drummer was entirely sure he was floating and would never return to the ground. 

“Thank you for today.” 

“Any time.” The older man responded with a dazed and content grin.

“Goodbye, Rog.”

“Bye, John. I’ll see you soon.”

“Yeah, you will.”

The drummer eventually arrived at his own home with no recollection of the journey whatsoever as his head was still way above, sailing through the clouds. The first stitch had been made into mending the heart that had broken over a decade ago.

**Author's Note:**

> I can't even begin to tell you how many times the mood of this changed. I started it off with every intention of having the two of them together by the end, then it flicked to John not returning the feelings and it was all sad, and now it's at a middle-ground between the two.  
> Does John feel the same as Roger does? That is for you to decide, folks.
> 
> Come chat to me on Tumblr! I am @roger-taylor-swift


End file.
